Lines
by style xx
Summary: You must have faced death countless times, but you never really saw it there in front of you. Back then, you were immortal, and you had all the time in the world. [KyleKenny]


Today, I am depressed. Seriously, my eyes have started crying on me at least 5 times for no reason other than me thinking the word 'crying,' and it's annoying because I've been trying to read fanfics while this happens. Chapter 5 of METhOD is just about done and up. I just need to finish the last part. Don't worry! It's coming! Just something my brain crapped out at 4 AM, after a horrible leg cramp and the seizure-inducing imagery from Lupin the 3rd woke me from my slumber. ;.;

Kyle/Kenny is my super true secret love. I honestly love it a lot more than Kyle/Stan, but don't get much a chance to show it because it's so unpopular. Lame.

Lines  
You must have faced death countless times, but you never really saw it there in front of you. Back then, you were immortal, and you had all the time in the world. KyleKenny

Lines

When you see the gray stone and tan snow, you're not sure if you know how to be sad. You see that first afternoon, in 7th grade, when he had been too bored; you, too eager to see your girlfriend to the dance. You see, in broken lines and lenses, the dark corner of your basement, where he was lying on his side, one hand tucked in between his thighs for warmth, sketching meaningless gray lines into the tan leather cushion of your couch with the blunt pencil held in the other. You see his soundless snores and the wind where he fell asleep while you were out.

That was when it started. You and your friends must have faced death countless times, but you never really saw it there in front of you. Back then, you were immortal, and you had all the time in the world. The gray stone you see now is how you made that distinction.

Someone had upset you that afternoon, and it saw you tear the gray sketches apart in your mind when you returned home to find him there. He was artistic, and he'd never cared after that first time you hit him.

It was never enough to take your anger out on him. Even as you found more gruesome and painful deaths to inflict upon him and got closer to alleviating that senseless fury, it was never quite enough. Each time you stopped him from being, no more few hours would pass before his inert body shuddered with breath and take back the life you'd forced out of him; take back his gift to you. But he had never done anything to hurt you, and guilt held back the urges you'd had to throttle his narrow neck for so long that he'd have no time to come back in between deaths.

And he must have understood you, because he always ended up back on that tan couch in your basement, sketching graphite-gray lines into its cushion like a nightmare you were too afraid to wish away for good.

"Kyle...if you've never died, how do you know you wouldn't come back, too?"

You'd had no answer to speak of, but you felt you could be certain that you wouldn't come back. If anyone but he had that ability, then you would be too tempted to hurt another with your anger, and you didn't know it then, but you didn't want that. That part of you thrived on exclusivity. He was yours to kill only, and you wished, silently, that he'd wanted you to be _his_ murderer alone.

And he'd let you kill him, and he always came back, though he'd never seemed happy.

He didn't know life. How could he? He didn't even really know death, and without one, the other is lost in the gray. You see it clearly in the nonsense pencil lines long-faded from the cushions of the couch in your basement.

He had meant something to you. You could be around him; he was stability and safety – he never expected you to do or amount to anything. He was proof of the immortality you had only been able to understand vaguely, if even that. You never thought beyond what you were seeing – he was always returning; chest shuddering back to life in that infuriating way. You saw him return, time after time, and saw that there would always be more time later to think beyond appearances. You had all the time in the world to figure out what he meant to you, so you never did. He had all the time in the world to hear a Thank You, so he was never expecting one to come. He never even wanted one.

Looking back, you see that he never seemed to want anything.

You think you should have asked him what death was like. Had he even known it, whenever he was dying? You wonder if he recognized his many demises by the actual sensation of death, or only by the knowledge that you were consistently the last thing he saw before blacking out, ever since that one afternoon in 7th grade.

You thought he was expendable to you, but you changed your mind. Maybe you were expendable to him, but he wasn't. Is it ironic that you only thought about it after he had been spent for good?

If only you'd had another minute – or a day? One more chance to feel that awful, angry sting you felt whenever you glimpsed the soul return to his shuddering chest – thinking back on it, you could always feel that when it happened, you liked to think you felt it, the wind of his resurrection striking your heart like the broken, odd-sounding chimes hanging forgotten on his back porch long after springtime had passed.

If only you'd been given one more minute to be immortal. One more minute to waste blissfully, fooling yourself to think you _didn't_ feel something for the boy lying on his side, one hand tucked between his thighs as he sketched meaningless lines on your couch with the blunt pencil he was holding in the other.

You see shadows. You are certain you could see the wind before, but you can't it now and it has left you completely still. Your eyes are burning and dry, but you can't gather the energy to rub at them. The sunset that you see is beautiful, as always. It always comes back and doesn't know death.

You don't find it ironic that he finally knew _death_ at the hands of someone other than yourself. After all, you'd only wanted him dead; not gone.

You were reluctant to let go of your childhood. Your innocence; your immortality. Who wouldn't be? You wonder: how had he even been able to live? Thinking his life would never end – that he had all the time in the world to enjoy simple things when he better felt like doing so – how could he even have known happiness?

You know you should have told him something. Said anything and given him a chance to feel, even if he most likely wouldn't have taken it. You are too tired now, and what's the point? Would it even matter to him to hear it if he really was just going to end up lying here like anyone else, dead? But it matters to you. This brown-tan snow and pencil-gray headstone won't listen, and you can't find the energy, even as orange light filters onto your face, to admit anything to anyone. It doesn't matter to them; never had and still doesn't, that you see in the wind now how clearly you were in love with that boy.

You wonder if that feeling can follow his ghost to wherever he's gone. Somehow, you know it can't.

When you see the inscription on that small headstone, you can't feel sadness. You're never experienced death – you can't know if this is really it; if that's all; if he really won't climb right out of this grave tomorrow afternoon and come crawling back to return you your stolen childhood. You can't know for certain if this is sadness, but when that orange light finds the headstone and the wind of his return fails to strike your heart again, you can see that all the time in the world has run out, after all, and here – right here – is your exact regret made into out in English; written cleanly on the headstone in the rough, graphite-gray lines you used to know.

--


End file.
